Posted on 1 March, 2009 By
Kim Woodbridge
32 Comments
(Anti) Social-List 3/1/09
Happy March! Just three more weeks until it’s officially Spring. I like Spring but actually prefer Winter to Summer. It seems as though I did some research this week because I have quite a few WordPress articles. I also have information about browsers, a sad story about a baby sloth, eco reasons for renting an apartment in the city rather than buying a house in the burbs and insult sword-fighting.
- Rethinking the 404 Page in WordPress – Palma analyzed her 404 errors and did a write-up of the best way to handle them in WordPress. She also discusses 404 vs. 410 files and how you can use the .htaccess file to direct errors to specific error pages.
- WP Webhost – Web Hosting that specializes in WordPress. After discovering this webhost I contacted one of the users from their featured sites page to ask how he liked the service. He highly recommended it and gave me a 30% off coupon! I haven’t changed hosts yet but I am considering it.
- Top 50 WordPress Tutorials This is a wonderful list of tutorials topics such as understanding the comments.php file and building a theme from scratch. I would say these tutorials are for the Intermediate to Advanced Level user.
- The hand-written Excerpt in WordPress: What, why, how, tips and plugins – An article about WordPress excerpts and why the optional ones can be so useful. I wrote about optional excerpts last Fall and do use them in my archives.
- 7 Fresh and Simple Ways to Test Cross-Browser Compatibility – Well, this is what the title says – 7 ways to check your site in different web browsers. This is the truly fun part for all web designers ;-)
- The Perils of Raising a Baby Sloth – A sweet and sad article about an orphaned baby sloth and how a couple of women tried to care for her. Before reading this article I had no idea that baby sloths were so cute.
- An Eco-Case for Renting an Apartment in the City - Environmental reasons to encourage renting and reduce sprawl. I don’t own a house and I don’t ever want to.
- Sinister business: Lefties have evolutionary boon – So apparently, being left handed has survived because it is rare and in earlier times it would have added an element of surprise in a fight, allowing the left-handed person to survive and win the fight. I’m left handed but not much of a fighter. I’m more into insult sword-fighting.
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March 1, 2009 at 7:50 am
Are you not satisfied with your current host Kim?/
BTW i really enjoyed all the links
Arun | BE Folks´s last blog post – How to avoid get rich scam sites
March 1, 2009 at 8:17 am
Hi Arun – My host is ok. I’ve been with them for a long time – over 5 years
and I’ve just seen the quality of service decline over the years. It
might be time for a change.
March 1, 2009 at 7:55 am
wphosting seems interesting… i’ll take a look at their services…
stratosg´s last blog post – BloggerBuddy: Update to v0.5.1
March 1, 2009 at 8:16 am
Hi Stratos – Let me know what you find out. I’m very intrigued.
March 1, 2009 at 8:43 am
Everyone seems to be talking about wphosting these days. I feel they are part of some other hosting group and not a new one as they are projecting themselves to be. No data to validate my guess though! Good list as always Kim :)
Raju´s last blog post – Best posts on Technically Personal! from Feb 2009
March 1, 2009 at 10:01 am
Hi Raju – I really don’t know. Like I said I contacted someone who is
using them and he seems happy with the service. But your theory is
possible.
March 1, 2009 at 9:30 am
Hi Kim – I did not even realise it was the 1st of March today. You have some interesting links, as usual. I really want to read about the baby sloth first – but common sense is telling me to look at the Wordpress tutorials.
When John save my blog, it looks like he gave me an up to date version of Wordpress. But I am totally lost – can’t find a thing in it. I installed a new plugin but I can’t even find the place where your plugins are usually listed, so I can set it up. It’s scary.
March 1, 2009 at 10:04 am
Hi Cath – It’s hard to tell it’s March here – we are expecting
our biggest snowstorm of the season.
The sloth article isn’t long but it is sad …
On the left hand side of the WP admin should be a vertical bar with
all of your options. Plugins is about halfway down the screen.
When you click on that it should take you back to the plugin
screen that you are familiar with. If all you have in that navigation bar is
icons look for a little arrow after the first house icon – that will fully open
the navigation bar back up.
March 1, 2009 at 10:12 am
Hi Kim,
Thanks for the links!
I love the article about renting. America has become such an ownership society. Even though 32% of Americans rent vs. 33% paying a mortgage. Like the article says, if you don’t own a home you’re considered to be missing out on the American dream. Not everyone should/needs to own a home. It shouldn’t be a mark against you if you don’t want to.
And thanks for the evolution article. There is no way I would ever challenge you to an insult sword fight. :-)
Jim´s last blog post – Awareness Test
March 1, 2009 at 11:00 am
Hi Jim – And renting goes up to over 50% in the city. Another thing
that bothers me about the suburbs is that all of us are subsidizing the
roads as well as the environmental cost. I would, however, consider buying the house I live in. I wonder how much it’s value has gone down.
I would keep it as apartments though.
And LOL on the insults – thanks for bringing that article to my
attention :-)
March 1, 2009 at 3:59 pm
We own a house, but it’s in the city. Sounds like our neighborhood is much like yours. I can walk 95% of where I need to go, although sadly I don’t see that many other people walking, even on mild sunny days.
I don’t have any particular preference for buying a house other than it is very difficult to find a house big enough for my family to rent that isn’t an “executive style mansion” for $2500 a month or a run down frat house at the end of a seedy alley. So, buying was the affordable choice, but I wouldn’t feel bad about renting. Perhaps it’s because I grew up in military housing in countries where renting didn’t have a stigma.
What I don’t care for is being double taxed, county and city, and then having county dwellers being smug to me about their low taxes and how they _gasp_ wouldn’t dream of putting junior in city schools.
On the other hand, I think my kids have benefited greatly from living in a diverse city environment and I enjoy feeling in the middle of things.
Tracy´s last blog post – The Power of Less – book review
March 1, 2009 at 4:03 pm
Oh yeah, I also can’t believe how cheap the houses on my street that were converted into rentals are selling for. Not to be crass and talk figures, but my house was $179k and these are a bit bigger and going for $100-125K. I wonder if they need a ton of work or something? It seems like it would be a great investment for somebody to buy one, live in one unit and rent out the others, especially if they could renovate units between tenants.
It seems like renters here do take pride in their homes and do things like spruce them up with plants, etc. The buildings that look run down are the ones that have been neglected by the owners!
Tracy´s last blog post – The Power of Less – book review
March 1, 2009 at 9:29 pm
Hi Tracy – Well a lot of prices have gone down – do you think that
has something to do with it? That’s kind of what I would like to do -
buy the house I live in but keep the apartments to pay the mortgage.
Then eventually convert the 2nd and 3rd floor into one bigger place
but keep the apartments on the first floor. But otherwise I have no
interest in buying – prices here are so different. I could maybe
buy a shell of a falling down house for the higher price you
mentioned.
And renting a house with enough space for a family of your size
isn’t really possible – the rent is too high and there aren’t many
to choose from.
It’s a really interesting topic.
March 3, 2009 at 10:32 am
I think it is, too. I think it’s well worth thinking about how much space your family actually needs and to put more emphasis on public shared spaces, such as parks.
I am kind of blown away that the previous owners of this house (around 2500 square feet and I think we still haven’t grown into it) were a couple with no children and they moved from here into an even bigger house. Not really judging (maybe a little!) but just baffled at what they’d do with all of the space.
The house prices I’m comparing are all around the same time. I’m wondering if a lot of the apartment houses are short sells and foreclosures? My understanding is a lot of those in this area are people who bought investment property and now can’t keep up with the payments. My house is also one of the nicer ones on the street, we considered buying a house that had been converted to a duplex then restoring it back to single family because there are tons of those super cheap on the market here but then we looked at all the O’Boys running around and realized as little money as we have, we have even less free time!
Tracy´s last blog post – Shangri-La Diet Week 1 Recap
March 1, 2009 at 1:43 pm
A custom 404 page is essential and using scripting to generate specific landing page 404s for different types of visitor sounds like a great extension to this idea, thanks for that link!
March 1, 2009 at 9:29 pm
Hi David – Great! Palma put a lot of work into that and I’m glad
other people are finding it useful.
March 1, 2009 at 3:21 pm
WP hosting should be a great idea if the service provides something that other hosting company do not provide , something that technically makes Wp sites function better, I have took a quick look and did not found much about this, anyway they are mainly hosting Wp sites so they might became expert in certain ways with the passage of time.
By the way. I am really thankful for your link of “Top 50 WordPress Tutorials “.
Chinese Girl´s last blog post – Changsha Introduction
March 1, 2009 at 9:33 pm
HI – The top 50 tutorials is great – so much useful stuff there.
Good point about the hosting – I guess you wouldn’t run into certain issues though – for example, the new one click upgrade doesn’t
work for me with my host. I would think that with a host that specializes
in WP that I wouldn’t have those problems …
March 2, 2009 at 3:15 am
So that’s why there are still left handed people. I was always wondering how’s it possible that the genes for that survived so many years of evolution. This makes sense I guess, people were fighting each other since the dawn of the day so that actualy makes sense.
March 2, 2009 at 10:11 am
Hi – I was thinking about the theory last night and was wondering, if this
were the case, why people have bad eyesight. Bad vision would be terrible in a fight so you would think the trait would have been weeded out – according to this theory. My friend did suggest, however, that
the use of computers and other electronics may be contributing to
poor eyesight.
March 2, 2009 at 10:23 am
What evolutionary pressure would there be in pre-history for right-handedness to dominate, especially if the development of left-handedness in the fetus isn’t hard wired in the genes?
And to Madhur, how would bad eyesight be weeded out? As long as you can mate and produce viable young your blood line will persist for at least one generation. None if your ancestors died before producing at least one child!
March 2, 2009 at 7:32 pm
Hi David – I thought there was a genetic component to handedness as being left-handed seems to run in families …?
Well, that makes sense – I guess the person with poor
eyesight would need to get trampled by a mammoth before
reproducing.
March 2, 2009 at 9:38 am
Wow Kim, great links, especially the 50 wordpress tutorials
Madhur Kapoor´s last blog post – Download a Website with WinHTTrack
March 2, 2009 at 10:11 am
Hi Madhur – Thanks!
March 2, 2009 at 5:17 pm
Great find on the Wordpress Tutorials. I like the link to one about having RSS only posts… what a great way to get subscribers!
~ Kristi
Kikolani | Blogging, Poetry, Photography´s last blog post – Prolonging a Productivity Drought
March 2, 2009 at 7:33 pm
Hi Kristi – That one doesn’t stand out in my mind. I paid a lot of attention
to the posts in columns one – I’ll take a look at the RSS one.
March 3, 2009 at 4:46 am
Hi, Kim,
I think WP hosting is a good idea since there are huge number of blogs right now using WP, there should be a service which especially catered their services to this group of people. May be you can write a post about your wish list from a WP hosting company, and ask the readers to tell their wish list as well.
Chinese Girl´s last blog post – Changsha Introduction
March 3, 2009 at 7:56 am
Hi – That’s a really good idea! I’ll have to think about it.
March 3, 2009 at 5:28 am
Thanks for the links. I will check them out soon.
Nihar´s last blog post – Resize Images using PIXresizer
March 3, 2009 at 6:57 pm
I really like Top 50 WordPress Tutorials – one of these days, I will create my own theme, hopefully!
In terms of apartment living, I’ve never been a fan of it. We rent a house currently (moving to an apartment soon) and I hate that I don’t have any creative license. Things like painting the walls a COLOR (thankfully our landlord did have the walls painted various colors before we moved in) or any larger projects I always dream of doing. That is one of my reasons for wanting to buy a home, but I do get the point of the article. And who says it has to be in suburbia? We’re only looking at walkable neighborhoods with public transit near by.
Carla´s last blog post – California is down to the last drop
March 3, 2009 at 7:40 pm
Hi Carla – I’ve been working on a theme forever but it’s always gets
pushed aside by other things I HAVE to do.
Most people don’t want to buy in the city because of taxes, schools,
the amount of space, and the cost of homes. I would consider buying
if anything in the city was in my price range.
I forget about the creative issue. My landlord doesn’t care – he’ll even
buy any color paint I want as long as I paint it myself.
March 3, 2009 at 7:58 pm
@Kim – We don’t need a huge place, just something with two bathrooms and enough space for us to have our studies will do! It’s amazing how huge a lot of places outside the city are. Of course, they are all empty and cheap, but we wouldn’t want to live there.